40d:Cat

Template:CreatureInfo Cats will kill vermin. They are fairly weak animals.

Cats cannot be assigned as pets. Instead, they choose dwarves as owners. This requires exposure to your dwarves, so if you keep your cats caged away from the fort they will not choose an owner. Cats choose randomly from dwarves they see over time, but have a higher probability of choosing a dwarf who "admires cats" as their owner. There are some dwarves a cat will never adopt, although they are generally rare enough that non-adoption of a dwarf by a cat is only likely to be seen in some rather small fortresses.

Cats are useful around the fort to prevent the unhappy thoughts produced by vermin, and also for producing large numbers of kittens. If you can resist their cuteness and charm, and you get to them before they adopt a dwarf, kittens can be butchered to provide a small neverending trickle of hides, bones and meat for your fort. As a breeding pair of cats only costs 22 embark points, this is well worth considering – cage them up together away from dwarves, and cage-and-butcher the kittens as they are born, lest the butcher adopt one on what was supposed to be the kitten's last voyage.

They are, however, infamous for the catsplosion: If you are not careful, cats will be everywhere, causing your FPS to plummet, and killing them will cause tantrums. An alternative to killing a cat that has been taken as a pet (and is therefore uncageable) is to draft its owner into your military (v-p-A), make sure his squad is active (m-find his squad in the menu-v-t), station (x-find his squad in the menu-s) him in a room with a door and wait for his cat to come in and check on him. Once the cat is inside the room, view building preferences of the door (q) and make it tightly closed (o). This will prevent the cat from getting out unless it slips through while a dwarf is going through. At this point, un-draft your dwarf and he will zip out to his normal tasks, leaving his cat in the room. Forbid (q-l) the door (just for good measure) and you are done. Repeat for each pet cat in a separate room.

Cats, by nature, will attempt to pack vermin to their owners. However, because they lack body parts that can grasp, they will cancel the task with a "too injured" message, but accomplish it anyway. For more info and a temporary fix, see Cat cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Too injured.

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